The Ways of the World
October 07, 2023

We live in the world, we look for a happiness in the world, but what does the world have to offer? Wealth, status, praise, sensual pleasures. But it also has the opposite: loss of wealth, loss of status, criticism, pain. You can’t have one side without the other. If our happiness depends on everything being good all the time, we’re in for a fall. So you have to look someplace else for happiness.

This is why we train the mind, because the mind has the potential that can go beyond that. We can develop strength and conviction that what we do really does make a difference in our lives, that it really does determine whether we’re going to be happy or not, and that what we do can take us all the way to a happiness that doesn’t change. When you’re convinced of that, then you can make an effort to develop the qualities in mind that you need, like mindfulness, concentration, discernment, all of which are strengths as well.

With mindfulness you’ve learned lessons in your life and you remember them. You keep them in mind. All too often, we learn lessons that we don’t want to learn, so we forget them. We learn that wealth is not reliable, status is not reliable, praise is not reliable, sensual pleasures are not reliable, but we keep trying to forget, and we go back to them again and again. Yet if you’re mindful of the lessons you’ve learned about these things, that gives you more impetus to focus deeper into your mind to find a better source of happiness—to work on developing good qualities wherever they may be.

As the Buddha said, you want to avoid all forms of evil and develop skillfulness to its ultimate degree. Get the mind still, concentrated, and then you can use your discernment to peer into the mind to see where that potential for true happiness is. This is where your happiness comes. And there’s no fear. There’s no anxiety. This is a happiness that can be found within. It can’t be taken away by anyone else, because they can’t know it. As Ajaan Lee said, when you gain the noble attainments, nobody else has to know, and that way they’re safe. They’re totally yours. And totally reliable. So work on the strengths of the mind.

We use the good things of the world as they come. When wealth comes, we can train ourselves to be generous, and that becomes a quality of our own mind. When status comes, we can use that status to help other people. Then that attitude of goodwill, that compassion, becomes a quality of our mind as well. When praise comes, you can learn how to be a little bit leery of it because you wonder, when people are praising you, why are they praising you? What do they want? That keeps you heedful. And when pleasures come, you learn how to enjoy the pleasures that are in accordance with the Dhamma and abandon the ones that are not.

In this way you can make use of the wealth of the world, status of the world, so that it becomes part of the strength of your own mind. Then when there’s loss of wealth, you can use that as well—the same with loss of status, criticism, pain. You can learn lessons there as well. All of it becomes food for your discernment. In that way, you’re looking for happiness in the right place—inside—in the qualities you can develop right here, right now.